Amid these dark economic times and the downsizing gloom in San Diego's biotechnology community, Ferring Pharmaceuticals shines.

The privately held Swiss company plans today to celebrate the opening of a 38,000-square-foot research facility in Sorrento Valley. In a little more than a month, it will launch a first-in-class prostate cancer drug that was discovered in San Diego almost 13 years ago.

So what is the company's secret to weathering the financial tsunami?

It has been owned by a foundation for 50 years, which means there are board members, not shareholders, that management must please, said Michel Pettigrew, Ferring's chief operating officer.

Ferring has been conservative in its approach to collaboration and buying, Pettigrew said. And it pays for things in cash, not shares, he said.

It also helps that the company has a presence in 45 countries, which allows it to weather the financial storms as they move between continents, he said.

Pierre Riviere, who heads the San Diego operation, the Ferring Research Institute, credits the company's success to its belief in investing in science.

“Our leadership is looking at long-term growth and building an infrastructure filled with products,” Riviere said.

Founded 50 years ago, Ferring Pharmaceuticals continues to focus on its original area of biological research: peptides, hormones and receptors in the body that play starring roles in biological functions.

Scientists had quickly learned that copies of the peptides and hormones could be synthesized relatively easily in large enough amounts for commercialization. And their structure could be tweaked enough to improve their purity and effectiveness, Riviere said.

Ferring has since developed products to treat infertility, children's bed-wetting and frequent nighttime urination in adults. It makes a therapy that is used to prevent premature birth and another to treat growth hormone deficiency.

Through the years, the company has expanded globally, and it now sells products in 70 countries.

“We consider ourselves today a world leader in the field, with one of the largest portfolios of peptides,” Riviere said.

Of the company's 3,200 employees worldwide, 70 are in San Diego at the Ferring Research Institute, which handles most of the company's drug research.

When Ferring came to San Diego in 1996, it decided that the region's cluster of biotechnology companies, though younger than the clusters in the San Francisco Bay Area and Boston, was one of the most dynamic and presented a number of opportunities, Riviere said.

Those biotechnology companies and the many other research institutes dotting the Torrey Pines mesa, bred the talent that Ferring was looking to tap. And the presence of trade organizations and major pharmaceutical companies made it even more convenient to build here, he said.

“Twelve years later, we can only see benefit in that decision,” Riviere said.

Just down the road from Ferring's previous San Diego home, at the Salk Institute, was one of the leading scientists in the area of peptides, Jean Rivier.

Between the labs at Salk and Ferring, scientists were able to translate basic scientific discovery into a once-a-month injectable drug to treat prostate cancer, called degarelix.

On Dec. 24, the Food and Drug Administration approved degarelix to treat advanced-stage prostate cancer. It is the first drug that immediately stops a man's body from producing testosterone, which feeds the tumors in prostate cancer.

Until the 1980s, surgical castration was used to stop the flow of testosterone in prostate cancer patients. And until now, the drugs on the market have caused an initial surge in testosterone, before lowering the amount that is produced.

Degarelix showed in clinical trials that it immediately shut off the testosterone production, Pettigrew said.

Treating prostate cancer, a leading cancer killer of men in the United States, is a market projected to be about $1.2 billion, Pettigrew said. Worldwide, the market is about $2 billion, he said.

In five to six years, the company expects degarelix to be the largest product in its portfolio, Pettigrew said.

Originally, the San Diego location was staffed by just a handful of people. It has now grown into a staff of 70. Five clinical compounds have come out of this facility and made it to human clinical trials.

After spending 12 years in rented space on the General Atomics campus, Ferring decided that it needed a home of its own, with room to grow. The result is a 38,000-square-foot building with laboratories and offices on Sorrento Valley Boulevard.

Scientists are already at work in the two-story building. But the plastic bubble wrap still covers the carpeting, to keep it pristine until the opening at 5:30 p.m. today.